The Marxist
Theoretical quarterly of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
Vol. XIV, No. 3, Issue: July-September 1998
Post-„Reform‟ Growth Trajectory
Of The Indian Economy
Prabhat Patnaik
„Rolling Back‟ State capitalism
The economy regime under which capitalist development was sought to be
promoted in the post-independence period had at least four important
characteristics: the setting up of a State capitalist sector to plug gaps in the
production structure, especially in areas involving high risks and long
gestation periods, and also to expand the size of home market; the
cordoning off of the domestic economic space against the free imports of
commodities from outside, so that the Indian bourgeoisie (and foreign
capital already located in India) had priority access to it; close scrutiny a d
monitoring of MNC investments in the country; and State control over the
sphere of finance, through the nationalisation of banking and insurance and
the setting up of special financial institutions, to ensure that finance was
made available at low interest rates (usually at negative real interest rates)
and in amore even manner to the different sections of the ruling classes: the
monopoly bourgeoisie, the landlords and the capitalist farmers.
We would argue that with these developments, in India the contradiction
between the Indian people and the new imperialism is becoming intensified.
In the agrarian sphere the emerging new contradiction is now between all
the peasant classes in rural areas on the one hand, and imperialism with its
local landed collaborators on the other hand. The earlier contradictions have
to be seen new as expressing themselves in new and more intensifies forms
in the context of the new imperialism and its assault on the economy. If
imperialism in the shape of the Tran national Corporations co-opts the
landed elites into its strategy 6 as it appears to be doing to a large extent 6
then the struggle against imperialism and the struggle for land are no
longer separate but they begin to converge. For example, both the TNCs and
the local capitalist firms engaging in the new agri-business want a rolling
back of the legislation on land ceilings so that their enterprises can expand
at the expense of the livelihood of the ordinary mass of formers. This is
where their interests converge with those of the landlords. All these groups
engage in blatant land-grabbing and in private appropriation of common
property resources. Any acquiescing to land ceiling exemption for these
groups is equivalent to betraying the interests of the working peasants.
Underlying the earlier regime was the view that the assimilation of an
economy into imperialist hegemony gives rise to stagnation and even
retrogression, and that a relatively autonomous strategy of development is
essential for rapid growth. The fact that this view found expression in a
programme of capitalist development that did not undertake thorough-
going land reforms but unleashed on the people a process of primitive
accumulation of capital, because of which the rate of growth remained
unimpressive, the impoverishment of the people persisted, and the
economic regime itself became unsustainable, should not detract from the
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correctness of the view itself. Indeed, the experience of the economy since
the introduction of the so-called „reforms‟ whose objective is to assimilate it
into imperialist hegemony is in conformity with this view. Not only has the
economy become a victim of stagnationist impulses, and exposed to the
caprices of international speculators, but the growth in inequality which is a
necessary accompaniment of „liberalisation‟ has resulted in an increase in
the incidence poverty and an undermining of the food security of the people.
The cuts in social sector expenditures have made matters worse.
GROWTH OF
PRODUCTION
Even since the introduction of „structural adjustment‟ the government has
started manipulating official statistics to paint a rosy picture of the
economy‟s performance. As a result, Indian statistics which were of a very
high order of reliability until a few years ago, based on a system which was
among the best organised in the world, have become exceedingly
unreliable. Perforce however one has to use these statistics bearing in mind
their inherent bias. Even so, what emerges clearly is the slowing down in
the economy‟s performance in all sectors. Table 1 gives the annual average
growth rate of DP at 1980-81 price and of the real value added in the
primary, secondary and tertiary sectors for he seventh plan (1985-90) and
for the period 1990-1 to 1996-7.
The reason for taking 1990-1 as the base year for these calculators is the
following. Because of the drastic deflation which was imposed on the
economy immediately after the introduction of „structural adjustment‟,
taking 1919-2 or 1992-3 as the base years for comparison is illegitimate
(since these were the deflation years). On the other hand 1990-1 was pre-
deflation, and a good agricultural year like 1996-7, so that these two make
legitimately comparable end points.
Table 1 Average Annual Growth rates (1980-81 Prices)
GDP Agriculture Industry Services
Average
VII Plan
(1985-90) 6.0 3.4 7.5 7.4
1990-1 to
1996-7 5.2 2.5 6.0 6.8
Source: Calculated From The Economic Survey 1996-97.
It may be objected that one should not look at the period as a whole since
within this period there are two phases, a phase of deflection during which
the economy was being sought to be stabilized, and a subsequent phase of
recovery, starting from 1993-04. This argument would have weight if the
recovery had continued beyond 1996-7, in which case truncating our period
at the date would indeed have been illegitimate. But the economy‟s
performance has been dismal in 1997-8, when the main commodity-
producing sector on which the hopes for an economic breakthrough are
usually placed, namely industry, showed a remarkable slow down. Table 2
gives the annual growth rate in the index of industrial production (as
distinct from secondary sector value added.)
2
Table 2 Industrial Growth Rate (percentages)
1991-2 0.6 1994-5 9.4
1992-3 2.3 1995-6 11.8
1993-4 6.0 1996-7 7.1
1997-8 4.2
The euphoria generated by the recovery since 1993-94 that the economy is
on to a higher growth path has completely disappeared. It is now clear that
this recovery was not due to some sustained new stimuli imparted to the
eco0nomy by the policy of „structural adjustments; it was a result of
transient phenomena, the stepping up of the fiscal deficit in 1993-4, and,
even after the fiscal deficit had been lowered in the subsequent years, the
satisfaction of pent-up demand for a variety of hitherto-not-available luxury
consumer goods. Since the rate of the growth of the demand for such goods,
as opposed to the once-for-all splurge that the satisfaction of pent-up
demand entails, is much, lower, the stimulus which such demand impart to
industrial production evaporates quickly; and this is exactly what has
happened.
If we take the entire quinquennium 1985-6 to 1990-1, the average annual
growth rate of industrial production comes to 8.4 percent. On the other
hand for the seven years 1990-1 to 1997-8 on the assumption that the
growth rate observed during April-February of 1997-8 holds for the years as
a whole, the annual growth rate would be 5.9 per cent. The fact of the
slowing down of industrial growth as a secular phenomenon, not just a
short-consequence of „stabilization‟ but an expression of the loss of
expansionary stimulus that a „liberalized‟ economy entails, through the
decline of public investment, through higher interest rates, through the
shrinkage of demand owing to imports liberalization, can scarcely be
doubted.
But a slowdown is also in evidence in the agricultural sector, where the
growth rate in the production of foodgrains in particular has declined
sharply. For a long time now the Indian economy has experienced a growth
rate of foodgrain production of a little over 2.5 percent per annum which
was a little higher than the population growth rate. Even during the 12
years period 1978-9 to 1990-1 (both being good agricultural years are
comparable), the rate of growth of foodgrain production was 2.4 per cent
which was above the population growth rate. However, over the period
1990-1 to 1996-7 (again both good agricultural years), the growth rate of
foodgrain production dropped to 1.4 per cent which was distinctly lower
than the population growth rate. Even the Economic Survey‟s growth rate
based on the index numbers of foodgrain production comes to 1.7 per cent.
(And 1997-8 is expected to witness a 5m. tonne-decline in food grain
output)
This conclusion is no trick conjured up through the choice of illegitimate
end-points. Even if we take 1990-1 and 1994-5 (a peak year) we get a
growth rate of 2.1 percent which marks deceleration from the secular trend
and just about keeps pace with population growth. We are therefore
witnessing the emergence of a serous food crisis. The fact that despite this
reduction in output growth rate there has been no actual food shortage till
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now is of little consolation. It merely shows that purchasing power among
the workers, especially the rural workers, has increased even more slowly
in real terms (i.e. when deflated by an index of the administered prices of
food grains). The reason for this lies partly in the steep escalation in
administered prices of food which occurred in the aftermath of „structural
adjustment‟ as a part of the so-called fiscal correction (for which subsidies
had to be kept down), partly in the cutback in government expenditure in
rurual areas ( on which more later) which has curtailed non-agricultural
employment and hence purchasing power for this reason, and partly in the
shift of emphasis towards export agriculture and away from food crops.
Food grains production being generally more employment-intensive than
the exportable commodities which substitute for it in terms of land use,
such as prawn fisheries, orchards etc., a shift of average from the former to
the latter that occurs as a sequel to „liberalisation‟ has the effect of
restricting employment growth. In fact this latter process explains inter alia
both the decline in food grain output growth and the decline in employment
growth.
There is however an additional factor behind the drop in food grain output
growth. And this is the drastic decline in real public investment that has
occurred in agriculture over a long period. Gross capital formation (at 1980-
1 prices) under the aegis of the government in the agricultural sector was
Rs 1796 cr. In 1980-1; it remained way below that level throughout the
1990s, reaching Rs. 1154 cr. In 1990-1 and only Rs 1310 cr. in 1995-6. The
deceleration no doubt had occurred during the 1980s itself, but the 1990s
have done nothing to boost public investment. During the 1990s there has
no doubt been a step up in real private gross capital formation in this sector
from Rs 3440 cr. in 1990-1 to Rs 4991 cr. in 1995-6. But even if these
figures are taken seriously, much of the increase in private investment has
been in the non-traditional sectors of export agriculture rather than in food
grains production. It is noteworthy that the growth rate between 1990-1
and 1996-7 shows a sharp decline not only for the coarse grains from which
much land has shifted towards export crops like soyabean, but even for rice
(1.52 percent compared to 3.35 per cent for 1980-1 to 1985-6). This is
symptomatic of a decline in investment in traditional food crops.
CAPITAL
FORMATION
But this is part of an overall picture of investment stagnation. According to
official data gross domestic fixed capital formation as a proportion of GDP
behaved as follows:
Table 3: GFCF as Percentage of GDP
1990-1 23.2 1993-4 21.5
1991-2 22.1 1994-5 22.5
1992-03 22.5 1995-6 24.3
1996-7 24.0
Source: Economic Survey 1997-98, p. S-8.
These figures reveal a picture of stagnation; moreover, even the slight
increase in 1995-6 was not sustained in the subsequent years: the growth
of growth of output of the capital goods industry which was 17.9 per cent in
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1995-6 dropped to 5.9 per cent in 1996-7, and minus 1.8 percent during
April-February 1997-8! Since the level of investment effort in an economy is
reflected in the output of its capital goods and its net imports of such goods,
a stagnation in the capital goods sector‟s output, such as what we are
witnessing and which is certainly unmatched by any corresponding increase
in net imports, is indicative of a stagnation in the level of productive
capacity. To be sure the output of what are labeled as „capital goods
industries‟ is not synonymous with total capital goods‟ output; nonetheless
what is happening to the former gives some indication of the sluggishness
of our investment effort.
There are reasons however to believe that even these figures represent
overestimates. First, the method of estimating capital formation is to take
some goods which are supposed to be used for capital formation and then
see how much of such goods are used in a particular period. For
commodities like automobiles, or „machines‟ which are used both for
consumption and for capital formation, the method is to assume that a fixed
proportion of the amount used in a particular period is for investment
purposes. As a result, in any period, when consumer durables‟ purchase in
the economy is going up, this would also boost the capital formation figures
spuriously. Secondly, construction which is supposed to be a part of capital
formation can boom without actually adding to the productive capacity of
the economy. Anyone familiar with the real estate boom in metropolitan
centers and indeed in urban India would know that much of this represents
speculative investment or luxury consumption rather than any addition to
the productive capacity of the economy. In short, the concepts and methods
used for capital formation estimation in India are such that increased
consumerism‟ would necessarily also get reflected as increased capital
formation. Since the post-„liberalisation‟ period has been universally
accepted as a period of increased‟ consumerism‟, this gives an upward bias
to capital formation estimates. And once we correct for this, the genuine
investment ratio would show a decline in this period.
No economy can experience an acceleration in growth unless it steps up its
investment ratio, i.e. unless it devotes a much higher proportion of its
surplus value to productive capital accumulation. Countries in East and
South East Asia which have witnessed extremely rapid growth in recent
years, until they were hit by the currency crisis, maintained investment
ratios of around 35 per cent of GDP. China has an investment ratio of nearly
40 per cent. By contrast the investment ratio in India barely reaches 25 per
cent. If the country is to step up its growth rate, then its investment ratio
has to be increased appreciably. And the argument of the „liberalisers‟ was
that if only the policy of „liberalisation-cum-structural adjustment‟ is
pursued, then investment ratio in the economy would go up and our growth
rate would accelerate. What is happening to our capital goods industries is a
decisive disproof of this assertion. Not only are the capital goods industries
facing recession, our investment effort is languishing, which makes all
claims about India stepping up her growth rate (and even reaching double-
digit growth rates) utterly ludicrous.
The reason for the poor investment performance is not far to seek. The
proposition that if only more surplus value is handed over to the capitalists
they would automatically invest more is a myth perpetrated by the
ideologues of capitalism. As a matter of fact capitalists undertake
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productive investment, i.e. add to the capital stock, only when they expect
to be able to sell the ensuing larger output at a suitable rate of profit, i.e.
only to the extent that they expect the market for their products to expand.
No doubt the growth of the market is something to which their own
investment behaviour in the aggregate is a major contributor; but obviously
the whole investment process is supported, and has to be supported, by
some additional stimuli. The three possible sustained stimuli which can play
such a role in an economy like ours are: public investment (and expenditure
in general), the growth of the home market arising from rapid agricultural
growth, and the growth of experts other than of primary commodities (since
larger primary commodity experts, as we have seen, may merely mean
diversion of production from home use rather than larger production). Of
these, exports, no matter how rapidly they grow (within the bounds of
course of plausibility), can scarcely be of much importance as an investment
stimulus for an economy the size of India. On the other hand the growth of
the home market arising from the agricultural sector remains constrained
by the absence of egalitarian land reforms, and even within the existing
agrarian structure, by the cutbacks in public investment that have been
imposed of late. This last factor (and the general restriction on public
spending of which it is a part) also eliminates the stimulus provided by
public investment through the demand it generates directly or indirectly for
a host of commodities. The „rolling back‟ of State capitalism therefore, far
from increasing the investment ratio, causes its stagnation and even
decline.
THE CRISIS OF
PUBLIC FINANCE
The usual justification for cutting back public spending, which typically
takes the form of cutting back investment and Welfare expenditures by the
State, is that the fiscal deficit must be cut, since it is a source of „instability‟
of the economy. This is false argument for a number of reasons: first, the
main cause of „instability‟ in the sense of either generalized inflationary
pressures or an unmanageable trade deficit is an excess of aggregate
demand over aggregate supply. The demand of the government is only one
component of this aggregate demand in which the demand of the
„corporate‟ and „household‟ sectors and of the „rest of the world‟ constitute
the other components. Hence the size of the fiscal deficit, which shows the
net demand arising from the government, does not have anything to do
directly with „instability‟. Secondly. The fiscal deficit has two components:
there is the deficit in the revenue account which shows the excess of
government current expenditures over its current receipts and to this is
added the investment requirements of the government which have to be
financed through borrowing. Now, borrowing to meet investment
requirements is common practice and there is nothing wrong with it, but
borrowing to meet current expenditures does require scrutiny (though it is
not necessarily reprehensible, e.g. in a recession) since it is indicative of
„living beyond one‟s means”. If the focus was on a reduction of the revenue
deficit, then it would make sense, but by emphasizing the fiscal deficit as
distinct from the revenue deficit, the IMF and the World Bank deliberately
try to negate the role of the government as an investor, i.e. to denigrate the
public sector, for which there is no justification. Thirdly, a reduction in the
revenue deficit, or in the fiscal deficit, can be brought about in a number of
different ways, the obvious one being an increase in direct tax revenue.
Indeed in any third world economy where glaring poverty coexists with
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offensive opulence, increased revenue from direct taxes is urgently called
for anyways as a means of reducing inequalities. But the Fund and the Bank
invariably underplay this avenue of deficit reduction and emphasize cuts in
investment and welfare expenditure.
Not only is the theory underlying such cuts invalid, but the fiscal deficit
which is invoked to legitimize such cuts, both acquires importance and gets
aggravated because of „structural adjustment‟. Since inviting direct foreign
investment by the MNCs becomes an over-riding objective of economic
policy, the rates at which they are taxed gets reduced in competition with
other countries. This, for reasons of symmetry, means that direct tax rates
on the rich as a whole are lowered, though spurious concepts like the so-
called „Laffer Curve‟ (which “show” that reduced rates bring in larger
revenues) are invoked in justification of it. Since customs duties are cut as
part of „import liberalization‟, and excise duties, again for reasons of
symmetry, cannot be raised as a consequences, indirect tax revenues too
suffer, and this is aggravated by the sluggishness in the growth rate that
„structural adjustment‟ engenders. While tax revenue cannot be raised for
lowering budget deficits, the increased interest rates, resulting in a larger
interest burden on the government, which are another legacy of „structure
adjustment‟ add to the expenditure side. Thus „structural adjustment‟ which
is imposed upon the country owing supposedly to the fiscal profligacy of the
State, itself works to further aggravate the fiscal situation, through lower
taxes on the rich and higher interest rates.
At the same time, a larger fiscal deficit does make the economy crisis-prone
if it is „liberalized‟, irrespective of whether there is any theoretical rationale
for it. This is because speculative finance capital, believing in this false
theory, can precipitate a balance of payments crisis through capital flight if
it thinks that the fiscal deficit can not be sustained without a depreciation of
the currency. In other words, what matters in a “liberalized economy” is not
the actual relations but the perceptions of relations by the speculators. And
because of this, governments, once they are trapped into „liberalisation‟, are
forced into curtailing the fiscal deficit, for which the only available
instrument is curtailment of investment and welfare expenditure. Putting it
differently, it is not the case that a larger fiscal deficit necessarily leads to
crisis for objective reasons; the claim that it does so becomes a self-
fulfilling prophecy in a „liberalised economy‟. And its curtailment invariably
impinges more on capital rather than on current expenditures, so that fiscal
adjustment‟ leaves the size of the revenue deficit unchanged.
The Indian experience fully bears this out. Table 4 gives some information
regarding fiscal developments:
Table 4: Some Fiscal Magnitudes As Ratios Of GDP
Revenue Fiscal Interest Subsidies
Deficit Deficit Payments
1988-89 2.7 7.8 4.0 2.2
1989-90 2.6 7.8 4.3 2.6
1990-91 3.5 8.3 4.5 2.5
1991-92 2.6 5.9 4.8 2.2
1992-93 2.6 5.7 4.9 1.9
7
1993-94 4.0 7.4 5.0 1.7
1994-95 3.2 6.0 5.1 1.5
1995-96 2.7 5.4 5.1 1.3
1996-97 2.6 5.4 4.7 1.3
1997-98(RE) 3.1 6.1 4.7 1.4
Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Budget Number, May 1997; and the
1998-99 Budget Documents.
It is noteworthy that while the proportion of fiscal deficit in the GDP went
down from nearly 8 per cent prior to the imposition of structural
adjustment‟ to 5.4 percent by the mid-90s, the proportion of revenue deficit
remained unchanged. This implies: first, that the reduction in the fiscal
deficit was achieved by compressing capital expenditures which is harmful
for the economy in the long-run since it leads to shortages, especially in the
infrastructure sector (and hence to supplication before MNCs for investing
in this sector); and secondly, that the basic fiscal problem, which lies in the
very existence of a revenue deficit, is by no means addressed by „structural
adjustment‟. In fact since within current expenditure, the weight of interest
payments has gone up owing to „structural adjustment‟ the revenue deficit
would have been even larger, and hence the fiscal problem even worse, if
the squeeze on the people through reductions in welfare expeditures and
administered price- hikes had not increased.
„Structural adjustment‟ in other words entails a very specific fiscal regime,
whose purpose is to increase transfers from the State to rentiers in the form
of interest payments, and to enforce larger fiscal burdens on the people and
cuts in public investment (so that MNCs have to be wooed to step in).
Inflation And Poverty
The rise in prices during the 1990s has been a direct result of this. Since
there has been a curtailment in the growth of public investment and a
corresponding curtailment in the pace of growth of demand in the economy,
inflationary pressures should have abated in this period. Instead we find
that inflation actually accelerated in the post-„structural adjustment‟ period
(Table 5)
Table 5. Increase In The Cost-of-Living Indices (percentages)
Agricultural Industrial
Labourers Workers
1985-6 to 1990-1 47.1 53.5
1990-1 to 1995-6 71.6 62.2
Source: Calculated from various issues of the Economic Survey.
This acceleration of Inflation in a period of „slack‟ demand was essentially
due to hikes in administered prices which were ordered by the government
in order to curtail its subsidy bill, and thereby the fiscal deficit. The
commodity whose price was most severely affected in this manner was
foodgrains. There were steep hikes in the central issue prices of rice and
wheat in December 1991, January 1993 and February 1994. As a
consequence of these of rice had increased by 86 percent compared to the
immediate pre-„structural adjustment‟ level and of wheat by 72 percent. It
is hardly surprising that the cost-of-living of the workers, both in urban and
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rural areas, went up so sharply, and that the cost-of-living of agricultural
labourers, for whom food is an even more important item in the
consumption basket than for industrial workers, went up more steeply than
for the latter.
Of course during 1997-98 there was some slackening in the pace of
inflation, thought this itself has got reversed during the current year. This
slackening however was no credit to „structural adjustment‟, rather the
contrary. Two factors were particularly responsible, among others, for the
slackening of the pace of inflation in 1997-98. The first related to the fact
that after February 1994 there was a long pause in raising the administered
price of food grains which indicated that the earlier sharp squeeze on the
living standard of the people had reduced that scope for any further
immediate increase in the squeeze.
A second factor also contributed. And this was the struggle launched by the
Left forces within the United Front to prevent, or moderate the extent of,
administered price-hikes in a variety of commodities. The kind of boost
which inflation would have got if these hikes had been carried out was
therefore denied to it. It was thus the pause in implementing the „structural
adjustment‟ agenda in this regard which accounted for the pause in
inflation.
But this pause itself is now over and inflation has started accelerating once
again.
The nineties have seen both inflation squeezing the working people, and an
accentuation of unemployment. The latter, as already mentioned, has been
a result of the shift of acreage from food to non-food crops, of import
liberalization that has led to a demand-switch away from domestic
producers, and above all of cuts in public investment and in public
development expenditure generally. The central government‟s total
development expenditure as a proportion of GDP at market prices declined
from 12.54 per cent on 1985-6 to 8.08 percent in 1995-6 (RE) and 7.74 per
cent in 1996-7 (RE). Since government expenditure has a crucial
employment generating effect, especially in rural areas, this reduction has
been employment contracting.
The form of such contraction has been a decline in the ratio of non-
agricultural to agricultural employment in rural areas. The reason is
obvious: since agriculture is a sort of “residual sector” towards which the
unemployed and underemployed workers gravitate, fluctuations in
development expenditure by the state resulting in corresponding
fluctuations in employment opportunities (which are in a proximate and
direct sense outside agriculture), manifest themselves through fluctuations
in the ratio of non-agricultural to agricultural employment.
The rise in the prices of essential goods and the decline in employment
opportunities have together meant an aggravation of poverty under
„structural adjustment‟. The head-count ratio of poverty for rural India
moved as follows for 1989-94.
Table 6: Poverty in Rural India
9
Jul 1989- Jun 90 34.30
Jul 1990- Jun 91 36.43
Jul 1991- Dec 91 37.42
Jan 1992- Dec 92 43.47
Jul 1993- Jun 94 38.74
Source: Utsa Patnaik and Abhijit Sen, “Poverty in India”, CESP Working
Paper, JNU
A comparison of immediate pre-„structural adjustment‟ levels with those
following „structural adjustment‟ clearly shows an increase in poverty in
rural India. Apologists for „structural adjustment‟ deny this fact by using the
following argument: apart from 1993-4 all the other figures are based on a
“thin” sample on the basis of which no valid inferences can be drawn; but if
we compare 1987-8 with 1993-4 which are two years of large sample
surveys then we find a decline in rural poverty from 39.60 per cent in 1987-
8 to 38.74in 1993-4. The problem with this argument is that 1987-8 was not
only a drought year when the poverty ratio goes up anyway, but also too far
back to permit any inference about the impact of structural adjustment‟ on
poverty. For the latter purpose we have to take some immediate pre-
„structural adjustment‟ years as the base for comparison. And since for
these years we have only the “thin” sample we have to make the
comparison on the basis of the „thin‟ sample. And the conclusions here are
unambiguous. Since these conclusions are in line with the trends regarding
per capita foodgrains availability which have declined on average between
pre-and post-„structural adjustment‟ years and regarding prices and
employments, as discussed earlier, they have to be taken as robust.
Accompanying this increase in poverty there has been a cut in the ratio of
social sector expenditure to GDP (Table 7)
(Percent of GDP)
Education and Health, Water
Culture Supply and
Sanitation
1989-90 3.26 1.26
1990-91 3.25 1.23
1991-92 3.12 1.19
1992-93 3.04 1.17
1993-94 3.04 1.19
1994-95 (RE) 3.00 1.17
1995-96 (BE) 2.84 1.12
VULNERABILITY TO SPECULATION
The effect of „structural adjustment‟ is evident not just in the fact of
stagnation or growing poverty and unemployment or the growing
desperation in wooing MNCs to overcome the infrastructural shortages. It is
evident above all in the increased vulnerability to speculation of the Indian
economy. Notwithstanding all the type about direct foreign investment, the
actual inflows under this head have been minuscule: during the entire
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period 1991-2 to 1996-7 (both years included) the total DFI inflow has been
$ 7.17 billion, i.e. less than $1.2 billion annually on average. On the other
hand what has come in larger measure is speculative finance capital in the
form of „hot money‟: during the same period 1991-2 to 1996-7 the total
inflow of portfolio investment (most of which is „hot money‟) has been $
13.7 billion, or $ 2.3 billion annually on average, which is double that our
large foreign exchange reserves of $24.5 billion (on June 12, 1998) have
been built up. But as experience of the East and South-East Asian countries
has demonstrated, this speculative capital can totally destabilize the
economy in a very short-time without there being anything objectively
wrong with its performance. A credit rating agency „downgrades‟ the
economy (for reasons it alone knows), or a rumour about an impending
devaluation is floated, or a Finance Minister is changed, or a government
announces some programme of expenditure, and „hot money‟ starts flowing
out, brining the economy to a crisis, and heaping misery on the people.
The operation of speculative finance capital represents the ultimate
irrationality of capitalism. It makes the livelihood of millions dependent of
the whims and caprices of a few speculators. It sacrifices the livelihood of
millions of people in order to appease a few speculators, so that their
„confidence‟ in the economy is not undermined. The real crime of „structural
adjustment‟ and of our domestic ruling classes who have embraced it under
the directive of the agencies of international finance capital, such as the IMF
and the World Bank, is that they have opened the economy up for the
operation of these speculative tendencies, which essentially negates
democracy, freedom, national sovereignty and the exercise of the will of the
people.
THE ALTERNATIVE
Extricating the economy from this mire is as necessary as it is tricky. The
advantage which India has is that our currency is not as yet fully
convertible, thanks to the massive democratic opposition to convertibility
that was built up in the economy even before the dangers of it became
manifest in East and South East Asia. On the other hand however the very
crisis afflicting the Asian economies puts pressures on our currency which
makes the task of a regime change for insulating the economy against the
depredations of speculators a tricky one, since any such attempt may itself
start a speculative run against the currency and precipitate a crisis. The
immediate task is to halt any further attempts towards financial
liberalization, autonomy for the Reserve Bank, and convertibility of the
currency. Gradually the economic space available to the State can be
widened.
The alternative economic strategy be built on the basis of four main
elements: egalitarian land reforms which, apart from their economic effects
in terms of releasing productive forces in agriculture and expanding the
domestic market, would mobilize the rural masses behind the new strategy;
a revival of public investment, especially in infrastructure, which is designed
to promote agricultural growth as a means to expand domestic food
availability as well as the domestic market; vastly increased public
expenditure on education, sanitation and health, which would eliminate
illiteracy, provide free and compulsory primary education to every child, and
ensure minimum health standards for all; and much greater accountability
of the State which can be ensured inter alia through the devolution of
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decision-making and resources to elected local bodies functioning under
direct popular scrutiny.
A revival of public investment, a substantial step-up in public expenditure
on education and health would of course need resources, and these have to
be mobilized essentially through direct taxation, apart from a lowering of
interest rates and thereby of the interest burden on the State. Bourgeois
economists and commentators who talk incessantly about the burden of
subsidies, including food subsidy, do not say a word on the far more
substantial transfer payments which are being made to rentiers in the form
of interest payments. And yet while the subsides have some productive or
redistributive role, these transfer have no such justification. Likewise
bourgeois economists keep hailing reductions in direct tax rates. But India
has the tenth position from the bottom among all the countries when it
comes to the ratio of central government tax revenue to GDP. (The inclusion
of state government tax revenues would not make any qualitative difference
to the picture). The nine countries below India are: China, which has a
completely different fiscal system, four oil-rich Middle Eastern countries,
which do not need tax revenue, and Mayanmar, Burkina Fasso, Paraguay
and Guatemala. Leaving out China and the oil-rich countries we are
therefore fifth from below, the other four being abysmally poor countries.
The proposition about Indian having high direct tax rates which “stifle
enterprise” is a complete myth.
Foregoing tax revenues in the name of attracting direct foreign investment
is the height of folly. Direct foreign investment comes in, if all, only to those
economies which are already growing rapidly. One can therefore say that
public investment would “crowd in” rather than “crowd out” direct foreign
investment, as it would domestic private investment. The reactivation of
public investment in the context of an alternative strategy and on the basis
of an alternative correlation of class forces is the need of the hour.
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